Day Trip to Kyoto from Osaka (just avoid our mistake)

Day Trip to Kyoto from Osaka (just avoid our mistake)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to our channel. If you’ve been tuning in recently, you’ll know that we have been traveling through Japan and seeing as many incredible sights as we can all while making our way slowly down south to eventually meet up with family. In today’s video, we’re going on a day trip

From Osaka to the breathtaking city of Kyoto. Known for its mesmerizing torii gates and natural beauty Kyoto is a stop not to be missed on any trip to Japan. So we have our coffees and we are on our way to get to the platform that will get us on the train to Kyoto.

We’ll be taking the train over from Osaka Station where we are right now, to Kyoto. I don’t exactly know which station it’ll drop us off at, but that seems to be the cheapest way to get there using one of the JR lines. I love getting morning coffee from 7-Eleven.

We paid $3 for both of us to get a coffee, and it’s hot. It’s like you take it from the counter or from the like… I mean it looks like it’s from the fridge, but it’s hot. Touch it. What? Touch it. Oh, it’s hot! How weird is that? They’re warm.

I just love it so much. Okay, perfect timing. We’ve picked up Clare, who you may have seen in previous episodes. She’s been traveling around Japan with us for the past little while. And this should be our train over to Kyoto. We have made it to Kyoto Station. That was really, really fast.

It was super fast. We took the express, I think? Express train. The express train, it only took 30 minutes? Less than that. I can’t believe how close the cities can be. And, you know, I think it was a good idea to do

It as a day trip or just use Osaka as a home base. Because it’s really not that much effort to get over to Kyoto. This waffle store is really well positioned in the middle of the train station. A lot of people pass by it and it smells so good.

I think they’re only 150 yen, which is awesome pricing. Oh, it’s cold! I expected it to be warm. Not exactly the most traditional breakfast I’ve ever had, but not bad. Okay, it’s actually really nice. Yeah? And soft. Tasty? Tasty. I can’t do this.

All right, so we have made it to our first stop here in Kyoto. This is the Fushimi Inari Temple. And it’s basically a Shinto temple that was built in the 700s. It is very, very popular and it’s one of the most popular things to do here in Kyoto. Probably in all of Japan.

Yeah, maybe. And it is popularized because it has hundreds of these torii gates which are these orange kind of arches that you pass through. And these gates are supposed to symbolize the transition from the secular world to the… like… religious world? You know so much about this place. I’m so impressed.

Yeah, I honestly, it’s a beautiful place to just walk around walk through hundreds of gates and brush alongside hundreds of other people because it is a very touristy spot. Going from the secular world to the sacred world. You’re in the sacred world, baby. Oh, literally, did I just cross it?

Yeah, I think every time you cross it. You know what’s so cool? One of the main places I’ve seen photos of this is on like my screensaver. For like my little Windows screensaver. And now we’re finally here walking through it. It’s kind of nice. It’s such a hot day.

But then these gates actually act like a nice little shade as you walk because this is an uphill walk. So it’s going to get pretty warm pretty soon. Also, how often do you think they have to repaint these? I feel like it’s a lot. They’re so pretty. The columns must be numbered somehow.

Also, you know what’s great? This is just one way. You can’t come down this way. So we’re all actually going in the same direction, fighting against traffic. Yeah. Thank goodness. It would not be fun otherwise. There’s quite a bit of traffic.

So something that I really didn’t expect here is that there’s all these little like breaks in the torii gates and then there’s little like sides you can like… Just little sides? I don’t want to call them an alley but like just a little

Offshoot from the main torii gates that you can go to and there’s like extra little shrines that you can visit really nice places just like take a little break take a moment enjoy the surrounding because it is so, so beautiful here.

It’s so peaceful I feel like we’re like in the middle of a forest and of course at a holy site so it just has like a feeling to it. It’s really nice to be able to stop off of the kind of the crowds of the torii gate

And uh… yeah come to these little extra shrines that are everywhere. Oh wow, this one’s really beautiful. So we’re just noticing how many foxes there are around a lot of the small, tiny Shinto shrines. After a little bit of googling, we found out that the foxes are associated with

Intelligent and magical creatures that represent the Shinto Inari which I think might be a deity. But they’re spread out all over the different Shinto shrines here. We just found a little offshoot again. Came up some stairs, not a lot of people are here, and it’s so peaceful, cool, and quiet, and gorgeous.

And there’s also some bamboo behind you, hey? Like all that up there. Look guys, I found a bamboo forest. I didn’t even notice yet. I’m still into the shrines. Alright, we made it to the top of the mountain. There’s a big shrine up here.

You’re not going to get views of Kyoto from here. There’s a beautiful shrine and people are praying. And all in all, this was an awesome trip. Such a cool thing to do when you first come to Kyoto. I loved that not only was it a beautiful adventure with the torii gates

But it was also a really fun physical exercise. So, 10 out of 10. We have come to, I don’t know, a restaurant at the bottom of the hill and like off of the mountain where the Torii gates are. And we get to sit on the floor, Japanese style. That’s why we chose it.

It just took me a sec to get down. My feet are pretty sore from climbing the mountain. But the food looks so good, like we’ve been seeing it come out. It looks excellent. Okay, I got myself, it’s like a curry udon soup.

This is, for some reason, not at all what I expected it to look like. It smells amazing. It smells exactly like curry, but then there’s udon noodles in it and chunks of, I think it’s beef. It’s so weird to have noodles, but I smell curry. Wow, that’s delicious.

To be honest, you know what the shining star is? These noodles are incredible. They’re so good. I got the Nissin soba noodles. I gotta say, I love the presentation of this dish. It is so pretty. I’m sad to ruin it. It’s so good. Oh, it’s so tasty.

And we also ordered Inari sushi, tofu wrapped rice or rice wrapped tofu. It’s a hefty little chunk. Oh? That’s good! It’s so pretty. It’s also a little sweet. It’s really nice. Weird, right? Delicious, but like I didn’t expect it to be sweet. It’s kind of cool sitting on the floor.

Except I keep smelling Nicole’s feet. I climbed a whole mountain, okay? I honestly can’t yet. My legs are asleep. My foot’s too asleep. I can’t move. It hurts to move it. Can you tell this is like our first time eating on the floor like this in Japan? We’re dying! I can’t.

That was such a good meal. Like such a good meal. I’m so full and my feet hurt from sitting on the floor. But the meal was amazing. Awesome! So, where are we darling? Oh, I don’t know. Still in Kyoto, I think. We got just a little lost. I mean, I’m gonna blame…

I mean, Mico got us lost. To be fair, Mico’s taking all the responsibility for figuring out where to get us to all the different places today. But he really screwed this one up. It was just, uh, you know, you accidentally take a limited express train and

All of a sudden it teleports you ten stations farther than you thought you would. And now Google Maps tells us we have an hour and eight minutes to get back to where we’re actually supposed to be going. I’m just taking them on a Kyoto hidden gems tour.

Staying away from the very tourist basic sites and instead walking them through a random neighborhood like this. How do you like the tour so far Clare? It’s amazing. You would never have seen that dumpster if you never went to this part of southern Kyoto. Oh, he’s so puffy!

Hi! Do you like the camera? He’s so sweet! Thank you! Bye bye. Alright, after a bit of a detour, we have made it to Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. Mico says he intentionally got lost so that we could avoid the big crowds in the afternoon, you know, and come a little later in the day.

It is absolutely stunning. It’s really just known because it’s so beautiful and you can just walk along, enjoy the bamboo, enjoy the coolness and hang out with about a thousand of your closest friends. I gotta admit some parts of this place are better than others.

Some parts are really really beautiful and you know really inviting and very picture worthy and some parts are just… Touristy. Very touristy. I gotta say that it’s really awesome to be in so much bamboo but I don’t know if I would necessarily pay to see this attraction. However, it is free.

So that’s really good. You can just walk around and just kind of get lost take some cool photos, but you know? Maybe that’s because it took us like two hours to come. So the two hour journey might be a little much

But it should have been like 20 minutes and then it would have been perfect. The bamboo is beautiful. I’ll admit it is beautiful. We have made it to the Gion district. Apparently, it’s the most famous district in Kyoto for geishas.

I guess there are still some that work here, mostly serving in the restaurants. I’m not sure if we’re going to get lucky enough to see any of them tonight. It’s also worth noting that the architecture has changed completely. All the buildings, it’s like we’ve just been transported centuries backwards. It’s all wooden.

It’s got all these cool lanterns for lights. It’s really, really cool. So as we’re walking along the district here, we’re really finding it’s like hard to kind of tell who’s open and who’s closed. And it almost seems to me that like the doorways to a lot of these restaurants

Or entertainment centers are really like made for privacy. So you can’t really see in and it’s kind of hard to tell who’s open. I think it’s just based on like whose lights are on. And some shops have like signs up front that say that they’re full.

So I think you need reservations for a lot of these restaurants and they’re super, super high end. So I don’t know that we’re going to catch a glimpse of a geisha today, sadly. The entire area reminds me of like… Let’s say like they have a whole block of speakeasies.

You know? It’s all secretive. You can’t tell how to get in, how to get out, who the patrons are. Very mysterious. So we’re not exactly sure how it works. I don’t think we’ll find out ever. But if you do know, let us know in the comments.

Final stop of the day is the Yasaka Jinja temple. We really came here just because it looks so beautiful and it’s right here in the Gion district. So it was really easy to come to. It is really stunning at night. We didn’t expect to be in Kyoto this late to be honest

But now it’s dark and this place is beautiful. It’s not too many times that we’ve got a chance to be out at night and check out a Shinto shrine. So it was right beside where we were earlier in Gion so might as well try. Might as well come.

Well, this was an unexpected visit, but I’m so glad we came because it is so beautiful here at night. I think the temple really caps off a beautiful day in Kyoto. I think it really lives up to its name. Yeah, it was a really good stop.

I’m super glad we made the effort to come. In the next video, we’ll be heading down south to Japan to meet up with my family and experience, I think, Japan from more of a local perspective. Yeah, a very different perspective. We’re super excited so if you haven’t yet subscribed, please do that.

Give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and thank you guys so much for watching. Well, I do not recommend getting lost in Kyoto. That was not a lot of fun. But, we are finally at the right station. We are so close to the bamboo forest.

I’d say I can smell it, but I can’t. It smells like nothing. Clare’s laughing at me. Okay, fine, not my best joke.

We took a day trip to Kyoto from Osaka to see all the best sites in Kyoto! We visited Fushimi Inari Taisha, Arashiyami Bamboo Forest, the Gion District, and Yasaka Jinja Temple during our 1 day in Kyoto. If you’re wondering what to do in Kyoto Japan, we think you will find this video very helpful as we also made a bit mistake along the way that you should definitely avoid during your trip to Kyoto.

We boarded a JR train from Osaka to Kyoto and were in the city in less than 30 minutes! Japanese trains are amazing. The efficiency of the trains means you can fit so many awesome experiences into a short time in Japan. Once we arrived in Kyoto, the first stop had to be the famous Fushimi Inari Taisha. Here at this Shinto shrine, thousands of torii gates lead the way up the mountain to the top of the shrine area. The path offered more maze-like options than we expected, and we loved finding small private shrine areas to take in this beautiful site.

We unexpectedly found an incredible restaurant at the bottom of Fushimi Inari Taisha and enjoyed some Japanese dishes that we will never forge. The best part? It cost $7 each!

Unfortunately, we got very lost when we tried to take the train to Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, and what should have been a 20 minute journey turned into a 2 hour journey, but we eventually made it to Japan’s famous bamboo forest. The bamboo was incredible, but the crowds were relentless, even though we arrived late in the afternoon! It was a beautiful place to walk around for a while, just don’t expect to feel too at peace 🙂

Then it was off to the Gion District to try to catch a glimpse of the famous Geisha who are known to work in this area. The Gion District turned out to be really interesting. It had a very different feel to anywhere we’ve been in Japan. If we weren’t on such a tight budget, we would have loved to eat at one of the restaurants the famous Geisha serve at!

Yasaka Jinja Shrine was the final stop on our tour of Kyoto, and it was totally unexpected. We didn’t think we’d be in Kyoto when it was dark, but thanks to getting very lost after lunch, we had the pleasure of seeing Yaska Jinja Temple all lit up and looking stunning in the evening hours. This ended up being one of our favourite stops of the whole day!

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== Chapters ==
0:00 Day trip from Osaka to Kyoto Begins!
2:18 Is this a traditional Japanese breakfast?
3:00 Fushimi Inari Taisha
7:14 The best noodles in all of Japan
9:40 Tour guide Mico failed today
10:59 Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
12:52 Gion district for geishas
14:12 An awesome unexpected stop

#traveljapan #kyotojapan #japan
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Hey there! We are Nicole and Mico and in March 2021, we quit our jobs, sold our belongings, and began traveling the world! We never thought we’d be making travel vlogs on YouTube, but after realizing that we had a unique opportunity to share our adventure and make the world feel more familiar and inviting to anyone watching, we took the leap and picked up the camera! We hope our videos show how wonderful, delicious, and friendly the world can be.